Italians!

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In the spirit of UN day at ILE...

So, yeah, tomato chompin' Meditteranean horn-dogs or greatest people ever? You decide!

― Ally, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The wine and food alone (and I'm not talking about Bolognese cuisine, the type that's become 'Italian' food in America, I'm talking about the whole damn range -- try some Ligurian dishes sometime, you'll see) makes them gods. Not to mention Fellini, when he was on. And then my high school crush was on the wonderful, *astoundingly* beautiful and intelligent Dariella Attolini, who moved to the States when she was twelve or so. Damn right you're talking classic here.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Some Italians are nice, some Italians are not so nice. Decimation, thats not nice. All those arty types were cool. And the Romans did invent alot of good stuff like the fire hose, straight roads and central heating. I like that TV show "what the Romans did for us",

― jel, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Italians do it better

― Madonna, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love Italian food. I love the Italian language. I love everything about Italy and Italians except for Italian men. Sigh.

Foccacia = best thing ever invented besides Pop Up Pirates.

― Ally, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh! And Pinot Grigio! And Sambucca! And Amaretto! And all those other things Italians drink! Italians are some lush ass fucks, I love Italy.

― Ally, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wonderful! Beautiful!
Venice is... breathtaking (and I don't mean the smell!).
I love those crazy guys.

― DavidM, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Italian women are dangerous. The food is untouchable. The language is lovely. Rome is one of the oldest cities in the world that doesn't have routine bombings (I'm looking at YOU, Jerusalem...). The Vespa, Fellini, Madonna, the whole of Western Art, Catholicisim... uh... the cannoli and The Sopranos.

― JM, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Their history is tops, you must admit. There's so much more of it than in America, and it's all so interesting.

― Lyra, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

La Cicciolina as Radical MP; tangentopolis as political system; Nono as a-g composer... I wuz gunna go to the Venice Bienniale this year w.Rae, but she too busy after all.

― mark s, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'd say that Italian men are classic (given that I'm 75% Guido), but most of the Italian men I've met must've walked off the set of _The Sopranos_. Wifebeaters are OK in moderation, but otherwise...

I love the fact that, when I talk, I move my hands.

I should be going to visit my motherland in the next year. My Nona has a small farm outside her house. She kills chickens in the morning, and cooks them for dinner. One time, I ate tripe, thinking it was chicken. I was 5. I wasn't happy. My cat's breath smells like cat food. I bent my wookie.

― Super Nintendo Chalmers, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Italians are the largin' it lords of food and bouze. Bravo!

― Michael Bourke, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Has Ally ever been to Italy?

― Greg, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Trieste is my second favorite european city, mostly because it's so un-Italian.

― Kris, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, and I plan to keep it that way after that Nicholas Cage movie.

― Ally, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My Dad used to tell me a funny story from when he was a teenager. He grew up in a factory town with lots of Polacks (sons of factory workers and coal miners) next door to another town with lots of Italians. The Italian kids liked to come over to my Dad's hometown and talk shit to the Polish kids, and the Polish kids would beat the living shit outta the Italian kids (being the sons of factory workers and coal miners and all) and the hometown cops never did anything about it (being all Polacks themselves, or Irish). For some reason, the Italian kids never learned their lesson, and every weekend the whole cycle repeated (i.e., Italian kids talk shit to Polish kids, Polish kids kick Italian kids' asses, etc.). Well, my Dad thought it was funny.

That said, I had a great time when I visited Italy. Everyone should visit the Italian Riviera (esp. the Cinque Terre) at least once in their lives. The whole thing must have made an impression because when I got back and developed my film, the overwhelming preponderance of my pictures were in Italy (esp. notable since I spent more time in France and the UK than in Italy). Italian is CLASSIC, it goes without saying.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

As far as I'm concerned, the inventors of civilisation

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Chinese or The Greeks or The Irish or The Persians ...

― anthony, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Grown-up Italians: good. Young Italians: ridiculous. Used to dance with themselves in the mirrored walls at clubs. Often manage nasty combo of being fashion victims and worshipping Pink Floyd - which is just horrible.

― Mark Morris, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Lke Germany, a bogus country (Hopkins will back me up here). However very nice despite that - Venice is remarkable. Rome is good too - the ruins aren't all that but the enormous quarter that Mussolini built is extraordinary and well worth a visit.

― Tom, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hordes of Italian language students wearing matching rucksacks invading every city I've ever lived in, DUD. Food, classic. Mmmm, pizza.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love visiting the place, yet I'm eternally grateful my grandparents emigrated. It's pathetic seeing three generations all living under one roof, men in their thirties with kids getting in at 9:30 every PM because Mama tells them to.

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

lack of work is a southern italian thing nothing to do with mama

― francesco, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This was Rome. And Tom - the "ruins aren't all that"!!!!!? Only the site of the greatest, most bloody and decadent spectacle of human misery and glory in the history of civilisation? My god, man, what do you WANT?

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dave Q - that's exactly what I mean! The site of etc. etc. reduced to a fenced-off bit of brick which you have to dodge pizza salesmen and bicycles to get a good view of. At least with the Acropolis and the amphitheatre at Delphi you have a fucking huge uphill walk to get to the sites so when you get there your exercise pheromones are fooling you into thinking it's spectacular.

― Tom, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Encroachments upon ruins = proof of why Italy is so great! Still living and breathing as opposed to a museum. All the tourists and their litter is small potatoes in comparison to the barbarian hordes of years past. I thought it was fantastic that the G8 riots happened in Genoa - after all, the home of Christopher Columbus, who certainly had a hand in the development of global imperialism - how appropriate!

I realise that my posts here make a mockery of all my previous posts heaping scorn and bile on concepts of 'cultural pride', heritage, etc., but fuck it. We're the best!

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

problem is ruin don't have to be spectacular . there's such a stratification of styles in rome that you could avoid viewing the most visited places . rome's history is incredibly complex and long . just try to take a walk without a guide in your hands ,that's the spectacular side . I'm very fond of greek culture and I go there every time I have the time to do it. but classical greece has not lasted so long .

― francesco, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Francesco this is pretty much what I did do on the 2 times I've visited - one time I went to the Colosseum etc. the second just spent a few hours walking. I was hoping to feel more of an impact - making the history more vivid etc. I think the long and complex history doesn't help here because - again comparing to Greece - it's hard to identify ruins as the sites of specific events, and get a good idea of how things must have looked when one site dates from 300 BC and the one next to it from 300 AD.

― Tom, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tom - don't you think it's cool that everything in Italy is on the same temporal plane? They've abolished TIME there, for the reasons you said. Italy = Tralfamadore - super-post-modernism in practice!

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ok but I was talking of a wider stratification:classical rome renaissance , baroque .... that' is making Rome an unique place even if it's too monumental for my tastes ... if there was some chance to leave unfriendly milan I'd choose florence (...I love that city)

― francesco, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

six years pass...

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h54.html

― gabbneb, Tuesday, 1 April 2008 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

three years pass...

ok eyetalians, explain this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZERygzWxcBY&NR=1

― I-95 Phuck Phace (Eisbaer), Sunday, 19 June 2011 19:54 (fourteen years ago)

looks pretty straightforward

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Monday, 20 June 2011 09:10 (fourteen years ago)

Love the way the cats move about. Also, yeah, i agree with baaderonixx

― Jibe, Monday, 20 June 2011 12:43 (fourteen years ago)

Jibé, ymmv, but we both might have been brainwashed by Chapi Chapo ;-)

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Monday, 20 June 2011 13:15 (fourteen years ago)

Chapi Chapo was way more terrifying! (it was François De Roubaix who composed the theme, right?).

I love Miao Mao, Francesco Misseri (and Bruno Bozzetto) are the geniuses of Italian animation.
He also did a series of tv ads for Fernet Branca, they were sort of inescapable in the Seventies (extraordinary soundtrack by Franco Godi, second clip is still incredible):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-uyXVOY9Ao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atMumrE_aw&feature=related

― Marco Damiani, Monday, 20 June 2011 13:40 (fourteen years ago)

@baaderonixx: ha, Chapi Chapo was a bit before my time but I did see a few bits here and there as a child. You just made me rewatch one and yeah it's kind of a strange show. Love the music though, I sometimes find myself singing that chapi chapo bit.

@marco damiani: they really have a very distinctive style it looks like. Also, it's very funny watching 2mn ads! for Fernet Branca, which I'd forgotten was italian after having drunk far too much of it with argentines.

― Jibe, Monday, 20 June 2011 18:07 (fourteen years ago)

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